


Sleight Of Hand

by ohgodmyeyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Anidala, Drama, Drinking, Eventual Smut, F/M, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Love, Magic, Magic Tricks, Manipulation, Possessive Behaviour?, Romance, Secrets, Show Business, Smoking, The Force?, Weird, mentalism, slow burn?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23174650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: A beautiful young hostess working at an upscale restaurant in a very big city notices a locally-famous magician watching her over a period of time. It turns out that he’s come to believe she can help him with his act; however, she thinks magic shows are silly.He decides to prove to her, for better or for worse, that there is much more to what he does for a living than she ever could have guessed...
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 83
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

He came in nearly every night— to drink and smoke, normally, but sometimes to have dinner, too. He was tall and fair, and always dressed very sharply. He smelled like cigarettes and expensive cologne, and his smile always seemed to get him what he wanted from just about anyone at whom he decided to flash it. Above all else, he was consistently alone... and he scarcely ever took his eyes off of the hostess who worked at the front of the dining room.

In contrast to him, she was small and slight; always clad in the smart, black little dress her position required she wear. She didn’t especially like what she wore to work; she thought it plain, and sometimes even a bit dreary in its repetitive lack of both embellishment and colour. She thought it made her seem dour.

The sharply-dressed man did not see dourness in her, however— not even a bit of it. What he saw when he looked at her was an ethereal beauty which made him want to both approach her, and carefully keep his distance at the same time. He saw a smile; a smile she directed at everybody (because she _had_ to direct it at everybody), but one that— whenever she pointed it at him— made him feel as though the typically-bustling space was entirely empty, except for the two of them.

She knew his name, because everyone knew his name, but not who he was... because no one _really_ knew who he was. He made his living as a magician; a famous one, at least in this enormous city... and one who found himself in a bit of a bind at the end of one particular evening. 

It was an evening which, to the ethereally beautiful hostess, seemed as though it were like any other she’d ever worked. She thought it was a normal night even when the magician approached her and said something other than ‘table for one, please,’ or ‘a seat at the bar tonight,’ for the first time in the many, many months he’d spent staring at her from afar.

She was, in fact, very wrong in her presumption of normalcy; however, there was no way she could have known it, then.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said.

She showed him that lovely smile of hers; answered him, “You have?” even though she had already been well-aware of his apparent interest in her for a long time.

“I have,” he confirmed. Then, with utmost boldness, “You’re going to help me.”

The hostess was incredulous. “I am?”

“Yes.” Then, “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?” He asked the question pointedly, and matter-of-factly; there wasn’t a hint of seduction in his voice... or at least, there wasn’t right then.

The hostess had not expected him to say that; she was not quite sure what she ought to tell him in response to it. She settled for asking her own question instead: “You’re that magician, aren’t you?” 

“That’s not an answer,” he chided playfully. Then, “I _am_ a magician, but I’m also a person— and my name is Anakin Skywalker.”

“I know your name,” she said, because of course she already knew his name.

“I don’t know yours. What is it?”

“I’m Padmé.”

“That’s perfect,” he observed. He thought it suited her. “Now, back to my other question— _has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”_

He seemed to really want a response to that; however, Padmé found it to be an incredibly awkward query. “...Not like that,” she told him uncertainly, after a moment of consideration. What was she actually supposed to say?

He shook his head. “That’s a shame.”

Padmé was starting to feel a bit lost. What did the magician want from her?

“...What is it you think I can do to help you?” she asked, hoping he would merely request a special drink, or ask to make a reservation. 

Neither of those things, however, were what Anakin Skywalker needed.

“You’re going to be my assistant,” he said as he looked her in the eye. He spoke in the same pointed manner in which he’d asked about her beauty.

“...What?”

For the briefest of moments, the magician looked deeply confused; however, he recovered very quickly. “My old assistant left me,” he explained. “I need a new one. I’ve been watching you for a long time, and I know you’re perfect for the job.”

_”What?”_

Anakin did falter, then: He didn’t know what to say. When he looked very intently at a person, smiled, and asked them for what he wanted, he almost always got it— no matter what it was. It was a trick he’d been using since he was a young boy; at first, he had not recognized it as being unique to him. As he’d grown up, however, he had come to realize that he was in possession of an unusually powerful ability to persuade— along with a few other special talents, too. 

He had quickly learned not to show his strange abilities off to others too readily; however, Anakin, by his very nature, loved to show off— and so he had concocted a cover under which he could do so, in the form of his acclaimed magic show. Nobody knew quite how he did the things he did; people who tried to figure it out could not, and others who tried to copy him typically failed in their attempts.

Anakin could seem to make both objects and people disappear and then reappear instantly; he could fix things that should have been irreparably broken without tools, and make objects too heavy to be lifted float into the air as though they were weightless. There wasn’t a trick he could not perform with a coin or a deck of cards; nobody played games of chance with him— and although he’d sometimes upset people by confusing them, he’d never been robbed, attacked, or otherwise maltreated by even the surliest of audience members, which was quite a feat in a city like this one.

The magician, to most, seemed both the ultimate practitioner of his craft, and completely impervious to critique or persecution in any form.

He truly was something to behold, and he knew it— which was why his difficultly in getting through to Padmé was baffling him presently.

“I’m offering you an incredible opportunity,” he finally told her. Persuasive powers aside, who wouldn’t want to be a famous magician’s assistant?

“I think I’ll pass,” said Padmé kindly, which was the farthest thing from what Anakin would have expected her to say. People always did what he wanted them to do. Why was she so resistant?

“I can pay you a lot more than what they’re paying you here,” he informed her, and that was not a lie.

“I’m sure that’s true,” she told him, “but I’m still going to have to say ‘no’.” The hostess was being very polite: She did not want to express as much directly to the magician; however, she didn’t remotely understand the appeal of what he did.

Padmé, in all truthfulness, believed that magic shows were silly— appropriate only for young children.

“You’ll regret turning this down,” said Anakin, but he hadn’t actually given up on his new assistant yet.

“If you say so,” smiled Padmé, as she began to resume her duties. “If you don’t mind, though, I have a lot of work to do tonight before I can go home.”

The magician looked at the hostess skeptically, then. If anything, her resistance to his odd charms had only confirmed his evaluation of her as someone who was special— someone he absolutely had to have.

“I understand,” was all he said, for now. He added, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” because he almost certainly would. He came to this restaurant after every one of his shows; sometimes, he came without having performed, just because he liked the drinks.

...The drinks, and to stare at Padmé.

“I’ll see you,” she confirmed, because she knew that he was a highly-valued regular customer, no matter how uncomfortable he had begun to make her.

At that the magician turned to leave, but not before looking back at the subject of his own interest one more time. He had stared because she was beautiful; however, it seemed she was more than only that. Just by enduring him, she had confirmed his fervent interest in her... and that was after having captured it in the first place simply by existing within his field of vision.

As he exited the restaurant that night, bound for home, he saw a taxi he’d have loved to take (he had, after all, been drinking); however, there was already another man sitting in the back seat. He knocked on the window anyway; when it opened, he demanded assertively of the would-be passenger, “You need to get out of there— that’s my cab.”

The man started to protest; however, Anakin stared him down: He trapped the man’s gaze in his own, and focused very intently. His expression was one of utmost calm. 

Once more, _”That’s my taxi._ You’re going to have to get out and find a different one.”

The passenger seemed to snap out of a trance.

Suddenly, he blurted out as if he’d just had a revelation, “... _Oh!_ Sure! I must have made a mistake; I’m sorry! I’d better get out and find my own cab, huh?”

“Thank you,” was all Anakin said as the passenger exited, and he claimed his rightful place in the back of the taxi. He hadn’t felt like waiting for one; not tonight.

As the car pulled away with him inside, he leaned back in his seat. He tried closing his eyes to rest; he was both tired and tipsy, and he knew he was going to get caught up in traffic on his way home. He found that his thoughts could not stop wandering back to Padmé, however— that hostess he’d been studying; his brand-new assistant, who had somehow thwarted his advances.

 _No one_ thwarted Anakin’s advances.

He decided to allow himself the time taken up by the drive to think of her, then, in the hope of discerning a way of convincing her that she needed to accept his offer. She’d been occupying space in his head for months by that point, and he was not going to allow what appeared to be an aberration of nature to stop him from acquiring her.

Whatever it was which had somehow rendered her immune to him, the magician was determined to find a way around it.

...In fact, the more he considered it, the more certain he became that he absolutely _had_ to.


	2. Chapter 2

Anakin had been drawn to magic ever since he had first learned all about what it was. He loved the idea of being able to use the gifts he’d been given openly; enjoyed experiencing others’ awe and bafflement at the strange and interesting things he could do with his hands.

His mother had noticed that he was special when he was very young; had cautioned him as soon as he was old enough to understand her words that his powers should be kept secret. She’d always told him that being the way he was would make his life more difficult; however, the older he had become, the further his mind had drifted from her advice. In fact, now that he was grown, he’d become accustomed to using his ‘magic’ to his own magnificent advantage; believed himself to have harnessed it in such a way that it could never possibly be a hindrance to him.

This was why Padmé had so confused him— she should absolutely not be exempt from his influence, yet she was. Perhaps this ought to have caused him to dismiss her altogether, both as a possible replacement for his previous assistant, and as a subject of his own interest...

But, while Anakin had many unique abilities, the ability to concede defeat was one which had frequently eluded him. He wasn’t about to give up on Padmé now— not only because she seemed to have sidestepped what he thought was an unavoidable power of persuasion, but because in his mind, she was already his: His assistant; his partner. Who knew what else he could make them mean to one another, if only he could break down whatever barrier seemed to have been erected between them? 

After all, he’d begun staring at her to begin with primarily because she was so lovely. He never could have expected her to also be utterly different from anyone else he’d ever met in his life.

He simply had to have her, and he wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.

This was the mantra which occupied him as he walked down the street presently, toward his favourite restaurant. It was the thought which encouraged and emboldened him as he prepared to attempt for a second time to capture that hostess’ interest; convince her that his was the best deal.

As he walked, he kept his jacket slung over his shoulder with one hand; with the other, he smoked a cigarette. Anakin had been drawn to cigarettes upon his first exposure to them much as he’d been drawn to the art of magic: He loved the way they looked, he loved the way they tasted and smelled, and he loved that they were so very easy and fun to play with— whether he happened to use his incredibly nimble hands, or his own mysterious, intangible aptitude to do so. He could perform quite a few impressive tricks, in fact, with the help of a lit cigarette.

He had not performed any tricks yet that night, however, because he wasn’t working, and it was still relatively early in the evening. The magician had come here tonight not to unwind following a show, but specifically to observe his new assistant; see, perhaps, what he could do to catch her eye. He didn’t have a plan, exactly, but he did know that he would have to maintain a sharp focus on her at all times if he were going to find a weakness in her defences.

Anakin, of course, didn’t mind the idea of keeping a sharp focus on Padmé— he’d already had lots of practise doing that.

He tossed the butt of his smoke out onto the street when he reached his destination, stood up tall, and shook his hair from his face. It was long and blonde, and it frequently came into his eyes; however, it drew attention away from his hands while he was on-stage. It was important to Anakin that people believed him to be very concerned with whether or not they could see his hands— if they knew he wasn’t worried about it, after all, they might realize he had no actual reason to be.

Anakin liked his secret, and although he wasn’t exactly shy about taking advantage of what he could do with it, he was also not eager to be exposed for it.

As he knew she would be, Padmé was working just inside the front doors to the restaurant when he came sauntering through them. She was walking away from him right at that moment, seating another table, and so he took the opportunity to examine her from head-to-toe without her being able to see him do it. He’d already memorized her features, and her hair; etched into his own brain over time the exact curvature of her entire body, right down to the way the black dress she wore to work covered it.

He’d never seen her wear anything but that little uniform; however, Anakin had, over the months, pictured her in an array of elaborate costumes and stage outfits. He knew that she would look incredible in front of an audience; that she would both compliment him perfectly, and distract his crowds more than well enough to allow him a bit of extra leeway in tricking them. He also knew that he wanted to place his hands on her, because he had certainly thought about that, too— but before he would get to do anything of the sort, he understood, he would have to make her _really_ see him.

“Padmé,” he said when she finally approached him, because he really did love her name.

She smiled, which delighted him, and said, “Let me guess— table for one?”

“No,” he answered. “A seat at the bar tonight.” He was in the mood to smoke and drink as he watched her that evening, and he could see almost the entire establishment when he was perched on one of the stools at the long, mahogany counter running along the far wall.

“Alright. Just a moment, then, please,” she told him, and she began to turn to make sure there was room for the magician at the bar.

“Wait,” he said, before she could. She stopped; he took a step toward her and asked, “Have you thought a bit more about my offer, yet?”

Padmé stopped herself from sighing (because the magician _was_ a customer) and answered him politely, “I wish I could tell you differently, but I’m still not interested.”

“Have you ever been part of a show like mine?”

“No, but—”

“Then how do you know you’re not interested?”

“I just know,” she said, still not keen on revealing to him that she thought magic was more appropriate for toddlers than grown adults. She looked behind herself, then, and saw a spot at the bar which had been newly-vacated. She told him, “A seat just came free— do you want to follow me?”

“Of course I do,” said Anakin, with a smile of his own. Once she’d seated him, he touched her arm— very gently— just as she began to turn away. He added as he took his seat, “I’ll be here all night, you know. Keep thinking about what I said.”

“I will,” she told him, although she had no actual intention of considering his offer any more than she already had. 

After that, she went back to her work. The magician ordered his drink, lit a cigarette, and settled in to watch her. He did exactly as he had intended to do; as he stared, he focused on her with as much intensity as he could muster (which was quite a lot) in the hope of being able to get inside of her head. 

Anakin could often do that— pull feelings from people; impressions. Sometimes images and words, too; however, from the hostess, he got absolutely nothing. It was just as when he’d attempted to persuade her the night before, in that she seemed almost to be able to repel his mental advances. It was highly unusual, and immensely frustrating— if he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was doing it on purpose.

Padmé, for her part, was finding herself more bothered by the indirect attention of the magician that night than she normally would have been. She’d understood that she was being watched before; now that she knew he wanted her for his show, though, she found herself feeling not only observed, but scrutinized; evaluated.

She didn’t especially like it, and she expressed as much during a short break in the washroom to her close friend and co-worker, Dormé. Dormé was both a waitress at the restaurant, and a friend of Padmé’s going back many years.

“What do you mean he’s watching you?” she asked, as the two of them stood in front of the mirror together.

“I mean every time I so much as glance over at him, he’s _staring_. He offered me a job last night, but I don’t want it.” Padmé was re-fixing her hair. It was very long, but she didn’t want to cut it, and so at work she kept it tied up tightly. She often wished she could leave it loose.

“What kind of job?” Dormé was reapplying lip-colour.

“He says he needs an assistant.”

“You’re kidding!” 

“What? No, I’m not— and like I said, I don’t want it.”

 _”Why not?_ Everyone goes to those shows! He’s famous.” Dormé paused. “...And he’s kind of handsome, too, don’t you think?” 

Padmé laughed. “Lots of men are handsome.” As she finished with her hair, “Anyway, I don’t understand what people like about magic shows.” 

“They’re fun,” said Dormé.

“They’re silly,” challenged Padmé as she smoothed out her dress. “Magic is for little kids.”

“Well, he’d probably pay you more than what you’re making here.”

With an sigh that betrayed some frustration, “I’m just not interested.” As she turned to leave the washroom, “Besides, he’s creeping me out.”

Dormé asked as she followed, “He is?”

“Yes— I’ll bet you he’s wondering where I went, even right now. He watched me come back here with you, and it’s not just tonight. He’s always staring at me.”

“...You’ll tell me if he _really_ bothers you, right?” Padmé’s friend tended to be protective of her.

As they exited together, the hostess answered, “I will. I figure if I keep brushing him off, he’ll just give up.”

“I hope so,” said Dormé, as the two parted ways.

The waitress was on her way to the kitchen; her friend, however, was heading back to her own station at the front of the dining room. As she passed the bar on her way, she found she had been almost eerily correct: Anakin Skywalker was perched on his stool, staring in her direction, as though he’d been waiting for her to come back out. She looked back at him unreservedly this time; however, she didn’t smile.

The magician did, though, and when he was sure he’d caught her eye, he lifted the cigarette he’d been holding between his fingers so that she could see it clearly. Very slowly, he released it from his grip; once he’d spread his digits so that they weren’t touching it anymore, he took his hand away from it entirely so that it was floating in the empty space before him. No one else seemed to notice. 

Then, as the hostess’ expression began to change in response to the feat, he snatched it swiftly out of the air with his opposite hand and grinned at her before sticking it back into his mouth.

After shaking off a twinge of amazement (how _had_ he done that?), Padmé tried very hard not to roll her eyes and shake her head as she continued onto the front of the establishment. He’d probably spent the entire time she was in the washroom, she thought, rigging up one ridiculous thing or another to pull off that trick— all because he apparently couldn’t stand to hear the word ‘no’.

He did not say anything to her as she passed, and she tried very hard not to look at him (why had Dormé felt the need to point out his appearance, anyway?); however, she could definitely feel his eyes on her— along with something else she couldn’t put her finger on, although she might have only been imagining that.

As she went back to her work, she wondered how many times she would end up having to give him the cold shoulder before he would finally leave her alone.


	3. Chapter 3

True to his word, the magician stayed in his spot at the bar all evening. He continued to watch the hostess with great enthusiasm; when she looked in his direction, he would smile no matter how put-off she seemed by it. Sometimes he would float something in his hand to bemuse her, like a coin or a cigarette, or a garnish from one of his drinks. He very much wanted to get closer to her, because there was a lot more he could do from close-up that would not draw others’ attention. However, she was very busy; he didn’t get the opportunity.

Not, at least, until the restaurant was just about to close.

Padmé had been concentrating on a list of reservations she’d written down on a piece of paper when she registered somebody stepping up in front of her. She knew who it was before she looked, but she looked anyway... and of course, it was _him_ again.

“What can I help you with, Sir?” She asked this through a thinner veneer of politeness than she’d normally have been able to muster— he was beginning to grate on her nerves.

“I _still_ don’t have an assistant,” said Anakin.

She looked up at him, then, and stared at his face. Before she could begin to admire his features (because since Dormé had pointed it out, she’d been unable to disregard the fact that the magician was handsome), she said in no uncertain terms, “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”

Encouragingly— as though Padmé’s objection were born of self-doubt rather than a growing distaste for the magician and his craft— Anakin countered, _”Yes you can._ I’m sure of it.” Then, he reached into his pocket and produced a card: A business card, or something like it; it had his name and a phone number on it, and he held it out to her as he waited for her to take it.

She didn’t take it, though.

With the same resolute stare, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want it— you’re going to have to find somebody else to help you with your show.”

He grinned at her again, because in spite of how this woman perplexed him, his interest in her seemed to grow with each rejection she thrust his way. She was frustrating and fascinating, and the more she tried to pull away from him, the closer he wanted to be to her.

“Alright,” he pretended to concede. “If you really don’t want it, I’ll go ahead and just tear it up for you.” He did so, then; used his fingers to rip the card into tiny, white shreds as he smiled serenely at the hostess. “ _But,_ ” he added, “there’s no trash can here, is there?” He looked around the front of the dining room as if to confirm; then, “...Do you think you could get rid of this for me? I’m sorry for the trouble.”

Padmé made a noise indicating that she was frustrated; however, she held out her hand anyhow, and allowed Anakin to deposit the torn-up card into her palm. She squeezed the pieces together tightly, because she found them annoying too, and then stuffed them into her pocket. She would throw them in the trash on her way out; she was nearly ready to leave for the night.

She regained her composure— her politeness— enough that she was able to wish the magician a pleasant evening; advise him to travel safely on his way home, as she would have with any other customer exiting the establishment.

He thanked her in return; shot her one more of his best smiles before he finally turned to leave. He went much as he came; jacket slung over his shoulder, cigarette in his hand. Some people, to observe him that night, likely would have evaluated his efforts as having failed; however, he still wasn’t finished. The hostess had yet to _entirely_ dispose of his card, after all, and he knew he would be back to see her again very soon.

It had been a long time since Anakin Skywalker had put an honest effort into getting what he wanted out of another person. His unique abilities typically made it so very easy not to that he scarcely ever bothered anymore... but, with Padmé, it seemed that he had very little choice. Again, he’d already decided that she was his: Whatever he had to do to get her was beside the point. 

Anyway, even if he could not directly influence Padmé herself, her environment— which he frequented— was certainly fair-game. That girl she’d walked into the washroom with, too, could potentially be very useful in winning her favour, the magician considered.

He walked off down the street that night; walked for a while, because he wasn’t going home right away. He needed time and space to think more about his new assistant, her continuing resistance to him, and what else he might do to defeat it... because he was still absolutely certain that he could.

The hostess, meanwhile, was standing outside the back of the restaurant with Dormé. There was a trash can back there, so she reached into her pocket to retrieve the torn pieces of the magician’s card.

What she found both shocked and perturbed her. 

“He ripped it up!” she exclaimed, and she held a perfectly in-tact business card up to her friend’s face.

“What?”

“This card— he tried to give it to me, I told him I didn’t want it, and so he ripped it up. He gave it to me to throw away; it was in pieces!” She took it from Dormé’s face, then, and lifted it up to her own so she could examine it. She ran her fingers along the edges of it; turned it over in her hand. She even checked her own pocket to ensure that she had, in fact, only been given one card... and it appeared that she had, because her pocket was now empty.

“He must have switched it when you weren’t looking,” said Dormé.

“I was never ‘not looking’. The last thing he did with it was put it in my hand, and it was in shreds, then.” Despite herself, Padmé did not tear up the card again; didn’t throw it in the trash— instead, she placed it back into her pocket. She began to run through her mind all of the different methods she thought he might have used to replace it (because there was no way it could truly have been repaired), but nothing she could think of made any sense.

Dormé still didn’t quite understand the extent to which Anakin was making her friend uncomfortable, and so she shrugged, “I guess he’s as good at his thing as everyone says he is, then.”

Padmé shook her head. “It’s all fake— his ‘thing’ is just a bunch of showy lies.”

“If you say so,” said Dormé as the cab she was going to share with her friend (they did not live far from each other) arrived on the narrow street behind the restaurant. Once they were both inside the back of it, she reiterated their mutual hope from earlier: “If you keep ignoring him, eventually he’ll get the idea.”

The car drove off, then; unbeknownst to the women inside, it passed the magician on its way to its destination. Something about it made him lift his head as it went by; made him focus on it. As far as his special intuition was concerned, there might as well have only been a single person sitting in the back of it... however, what he got from that person in the short amount of time he had to do so told him three very useful things: Her name was Dormé, Padmé trusted her very much, and she was the one he would have to win over first if he was to have a chance with his new assistant.

Suddenly, he felt as though his job had just become a lot easier— getting into the head of someone the hostess trusted was the next best thing to getting inside of _her_ head. Now that he knew he could do that, he was positive that he would be able to extract all kinds of information about his subject which he could use to his own advantage. 

Besides that, if he caught Dormé alone, he could make a good enough impression on her that she would almost certainly feel compelled to pass it onto her friend. If he could not endear himself to her directly, he thought, then doing so through somebody close to her would have to do. All he needed was to get his foot in the door, because that’s all it ever really took— it just so happened that Padmé kept the door to her mind more tightly-sealed than most people did.

Again, if he hadn’t known better, Anakin would have thought she was doing it on purpose.

Padmé, in all actuality, was not doing it on purpose— in fact, she reflected as she ascended the stairs leading up to her apartment’s front door, she didn’t really know what it was Anakin was trying to accomplish with her... or why he was doing it. There were lots of beautiful women in that city; likely an even greater number than that who would have loved the job he was offering her.

She didn’t understand why he wanted her, specifically, for his show any more than she could discern why he’d been watching her so intently for all those months to begin with. She might have been flattered otherwise, but she did harbour a distinct distaste for magic tricks... and besides that, the magician’s attention itself was close to overwhelming in its singular intensity. He never stared at anyone else the way he stared at her; indeed, she couldn’t remember him ever even coming into the restaurant with his previous assistant.

Part of her wondered why she’d ‘left’ him, as he had told her.

Before undressing that night, she removed that business card from her pocket. It confounded her, frustrated her, and— although she never would have admitted it yet; least of all to herself— she was somewhat intrigued by it. It might have been a silly little deception, but she’d have loved to know how he’d done it. Padmé was someone who trusted what she could see with her own eyes; seeing something and being unable to know how (or even whether) it had really happened bothered her.

She fell asleep, eventually, with her thoughts still reluctantly fixed on the magician. 

She did not consider how very much it would have pleased him to know that he was on her mind.


	4. Chapter 4

The magician stood at the end of the narrow street that ran behind his favourite restaurant. It was very early in the evening; much earlier than he was used to, and even the dull and smoggy twilight permeating the sky felt unfamiliar to him. Stage lights were one thing, but he was quite unused to the natural brightness of the sun. He squinted as he took a long haul off of his cigarette; peered down the main road.

He was waiting for someone— someone he knew would be arriving there soon: The hostess’ trusted friend, Dormé. He’d already deduced that she was his best chance at obtaining Padmé’s attention; now, all he had to do was speak to her alone. 

Meeting her as she arrived at work, he knew, was likely the best way to do that... whether it made his eyes hurt or not. 

He might have felt nervous; however, Anakin didn’t get nervous— or, if he did, he never acknowledged it. Having made a career of performing tricks had immunized him over time to most forms of social anxiety, and refining his own unique power over the course of his life left him, now, with a near-unrivalled aptitude for focus. Fear (of any kind) was very rarely a problem for him.

This meant that as he watched the cars— cars of of all different kinds— stream by him en-route to their various destinations, he had no trouble pinpointing the one in which the current subject of that incredibly adept focus of his was sitting: It was a taxi; black... and Anakin’s only concern was whether or not Dormé was alone inside of it. While it seemed to him that she was, he knew (to his own continued frustration) that he would not have been able to detect Padmé, if she had happened to share a car with her friend that evening.

That was his reason for waiting at the end of the narrow street, even as the car he’d been waiting for turned and drove down its length. He wanted to see who was going to get out of it, before he presumed to approach. 

Although not anxious, necessarily, Anakin was as unused to not knowing things as he’d become to sunlight; things like where people were, or what their intentions might be. Other human beings were typically very easy for him to decode, analyze, and manipulate— again, Padmé’s inexplicable resistance to his techniques should have rendered her a lost cause in his eyes. Whatever it was which seemed to make her special had already had the effect of drawing his interest, though, and it didn’t appear as if that interest were going to cease.

Even more than focused or talented, the magician was determined— and he always got what he wanted, no matter what he had to do to get it. 

Presently, he wanted to find out whether the hostess’ friend had come to work alone or not, so he observed as the back door to the black taxi opened up... and, to his satisfaction, only one person exited the vehicle. It was exactly who he’d been expecting, and so he threw his cigarette to the ground behind him as he drew back his shoulders and began to approach her confidently.

She noticed him before he said her name; however, he said it anyway: “Dormé.”

It was not unfathomable that the magician would know her; she’d served him before, and so it was not a surprise. The fact that he would address her outside of the dining room, however, was. They were left alone together in the alley as the taxi pulled away, and she answered him with his own name, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“That’s me,” he told her in response, followed seamlessly by, “And I need your help with something.”

“You do...?” While Dormé awaited an explanation, she prepared to rebuff Anakin Skywalker, and warn him not to bother her friend anymore. It was only last night that he’d pulled that strange trick on her with the business card... and although he was both handsome and famous, she wasn’t going to allow herself or Padmé to be pushed around by him.

Of course, the magician had other plans. He stared intently at Dormé; made sure he caught her eye (it was quite easy), and once he had, he spoke to her slowly and clearly: _”Yes._ Your friend, Padmé, is wrong about me— she’s ignoring an amazing opportunity.” Dormé only nodded as she gazed up at the magician, and so he continued in the same measured tone, “You’re going to tell her that she _needs_ to give me a chance.”

The waitress tilted her head, then, and after a pause she said back, “...I think I’m going to tell her she should talk to you.”

Anakin smiled. “That’s a wonderful idea,” he praised. “I also have something I’d like you to give her. Do you think you could do that for me?”

“Sure,” answered Dormé, still transfixed.

Out of his sleeve, then, the magician smoothly produced an envelope— narrow, white, and entirely blank. He held it up to the waitress. “These are tickets to my show on Friday night. Everything you need to know is in the envelope— take Padmé with you, and make sure to let her know how excited you are to go.”

A smile spread over Dormé’s face as she took the tickets in her hand. “Thank you!” she said to him. “I can’t wait to—”

Anakin put up his hand; he knew what she was going to say. “Shh— no. I’d rather you not tell her where the tickets came from. Alright?”

“Alright.”

As he continued to hold her gaze, he went on, “Just tell her that you picked these up because you couldn’t stop thinking about what a big mistake she’s making by turning me down.”

“Okay,” said Dormé.

“But,” Anakin finished, “You and I— we never spoke here, did we?”

Dormé shook her head, “No. No, we didn’t.”

“ _Good girl._ Now, go off and get ready for work.” He grasped the waitress by the shoulders at that, and turned her gently in the direction of the restaurant’s staff entrance. Wordlessly, she stepped toward it; as she did, the magician turned and walked off the other way.

With the first phase of his plan now complete, he had a couple of hours before he could begin the next... which, of course, would involve addressing the hostess directly again, in the hope that she’d have taken to heart what he knew Dormé would tell her. He had a feeling, too, that if he could rope her into seeing him in action, it might go a long way in helping her to reconsider what he had to offer— hence, of course, those tickets. 

Once he was back on the main street, he looked around himself and lit another cigarette. The sun was setting enough that he was beginning to feel much more comfortable, and the distinct aura of nighttime in the city was finally permeating his senses. Feeling much more in his own element, he strolled down the street, thinking about that confounding hostess... and how he was looking forward to seeing her again later that night.

He always looked forward to seeing her, but tonight he held within him a new hope that she might respond more favourably to his advances. 

Anakin felt closer to his new assistant, now, than he ever had before.

...

“You did _what?_ ” Padmé was in the bathroom at the restaurant with Dormé getting ready for her shift, and she was incredulous.

“I thought it would be fun!” Dormé had just handed her friend the envelope with the tickets.

“It’s a magic show! I told you how I feel about magic shows.” 

“It’s _his_ magic show!” Although Dormé could hardly remember obtaining the tickets, she had a distinct feeling that she had done so, somehow, because she’d been unable to get Anakin Skywalker out of her head. Maybe it had been that business card trick which had done it, or his outstanding offer to her friend— she couldn’t be entirely sure.

“So what? I told you how I feel about him, too— just last night!” Padmé was becoming irritated. It was as though Dormé hadn’t even heard her before.

“You don’t understand— I think you’re wrong about him.” 

“Wrong about him? He tricks people for a living, and he can’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” She shook her head as she looked into the mirror; tied her hair up tightly, as she always did prior to starting work. 

Dormé paused; seemed to consider something carefully. Finally, “...I think you should talk to him again.”

One thing or another in her friend’s voice caused Padmé to soften her own demeanour. After a brief hesitation, she asked carefully, “...Why do you think that?”

The two women looked at each other, then. Dormé answered, “I think there’s something special about him,” although she couldn’t have identified the actual source of that thought if she’d tried. “He’s offering you a chance to get out of here, you know.” Then, with a smile, “It must be because he thinks _you’re_ special.”

Padmé laughed, and pictured the magician in her head despite herself. Then she examined Dormé’s face, but couldn’t detect even a trace of duplicity. Anyway, she mused, when had her friend ever lied to her; misled her? Never, to her recollection.

“...Do you really think I should try talking to him again?” She turned back to the mirror as she anticipated the answer she was about to get.

 _”Yes!_ I’d tell you to brush him off again if I figured that’s what you should do... but, I really think you need to give him another chance. There’s just something about him— I can’t stop thinking about that offer he made you.” There was, indeed, something about Anakin— although Dormé, in that particular moment, had no idea how correct in her own evaluation she truly was... she only knew that she felt very strongly compelled toward sharing it.

Padmé sighed. “Do you suppose he’ll be here tonight, then?”

“Of course,” said Dormé.

“...Fine. I’ll say hello to him if I get the chance, alright?”

The waitress grinned. “Good! Tell him I got us tickets to his show, too— and that he’ll see us there on Friday night, if he looks.”

 _He’s always looking,_ thought the hostess, but what she said was, “I will,” before turning to exit the bathroom. Dormé didn’t follow; she wasn’t finished quite yet. On her way out the door, though, Padmé stopped and added, “You’d better be right about this guy— you know I trust your judgment, don’t you?”

From her spot in front of the mirror, the waitress answered simply, “You can trust me— I know it. _I have a feeling about him._ ”

Padmé had faith in Dormé’s feeling, but that was only because she did not know where it had come from.


	5. Chapter 5

"Five minutes, Mr. Skywalker," said the stage-hand.

"Five minutes," the magician confirmed. 

He lit yet another one of his cigarettes as the other young man walked away, knowing that he had just enough time left to enjoy it. It was Friday night, and he was backstage at his preferred venue, waiting for his cue to walk out in front of his audience. The crowd was large tonight; it was always large (and often a bit rowdy) just before the start of the weekend. Sating its members would require some concentration, and while the magician typically was very good at maintaining his focus, he simply couldn't seem to get his most recent conversation with that lovely hostess of his off his mind.

 _"My friend bought tickets to your show,"_ she had said to him on his way out of the restaurant, _"and she thinks I ought to take you up on your offer."_

 _"Your friend is smart,"_ Anakin had replied with a grin. _"I can't wait for you to see first-hand what you'll be missing out on if you don't reconsider."_

Padmé had laughed at that, perhaps despite herself. Anakin had thought it a good sign. 

Right now, he was peeking out at his audience in the hopes of seeing if he could spot her. Since he could never seem to get a read on her energy, his sight was all he had to go by— he wasn't used to that at all; didn't especially like the feeling of powerlessness she unwittingly imposed upon him. He did like _her_ , though; in fact, he had known for a long time that he liked her very much... so, using only his eyes, he scanned the crowd. She should, he thought, be somewhere very close to the front.

It wasn't until he was forced to stub out his cigarette on the bottom of his highly-polished shoe and toss it into the trash that he finally noticed her, and by then there was a bright, hot light trained on him, indicating that it was time to walk out onto the stage.

He wasn't anxious (Anakin didn't get anxious; not about his work, anyhow), but he was eager to see his hostess... and, even more than that, he was eager to have her see _him._

...

"How much did you pay for these tickets, anyway?" Padmé asked Dormé. 

The women were seated together in the fifth row of seats from where the magician would soon be performing. When her friend had said that she'd obtained tickets to his show, Padmé had assumed that the two of them would end up fairly far away from the action. The fact that they were this close to the stage itself gave her pause: She'd already spent far too much time getting stared at by Anakin for her liking; if he could see her clearly from where he was standing, she had a feeling that no matter how busy he happened to be, he wasn't going to deny himself the opportunity to gawk.

"I don't actually remember," answered Dormé thoughtfully, which was true. In fact, she could scarcely recall where the tickets had come from at all by this point... but she _had_ to have bought them, because how else would she have gotten them? Somehow, she possessed no memory whatsoever of Anakin's having given them to her, which certainly was a good thing for him: Dormé was typically not all that good at keeping secrets from her friend.

Just as Padmé was about to express her discomfort at having been seated so close to the stage, it lit up— and contrary to what she might have expected, the magician stepped out onto it quietly, with very little fanfare (besides that which was generated by the audience itself). There was no music to speak of; no lasers or coloured lights, and no fake smoke. Just Anakin Skywalker, sporting a crisp, white shirt, pressed black pants, and an undeniably captivating smile which told her without a doubt that he was exactly where he wanted to be.

She hadn't at all been wrong about his staring.

"Hello," he said smoothly, as the crowd hushed itself. "Are you here to see me?"

Anyone who hadn't noticed him looking directly at the hostess would have thought that he was being coy with his spectators; Padmé, however, knew better. She could see quite plainly that his eyes were trained on her. Since she wasn't the one at work this time, she sighed and shook her head, to which she could have sworn she saw him shrug.

After that, he posed a question: "Who here feels like making some money tonight?" he asked, before pausing to listen to the rising din of the crowd. "I don't mean a little bit of money," he went on, "I mean _a lot_ of money," and he pulled his own wallet from his back pocket; opened it and started leafing through a thick collection of bills.

Padmé couldn't help but wonder whether this wasn't a particularly creative attempt at recruiting a new assistant— at, perhaps, recruiting _her_. The magician, after all, had made a big deal of his ability to pay her handsomely if she were to join him. What the hostess didn't know was that Anakin Skywalker would never in a million years have chosen her as a player in the little guessing-game with which he was about to kick off his show: Padmé, after all, was the only person in the audience whose mind he knew he couldn't get into, no matter how hard he tried.

Anyhow, lots of other people were waving their hands (or their friends' hands) wildly in the air; many were shouting or hollering for themselves to be selected. Anakin pretended to look over the crowd carefully, as though it mattered to him who he ended up choosing.

"You," he smiled, pointing first to a blonde woman in the front row. "And you," to a man in a farther-out section of seating close to the centre staircase. "And you, and you too— you look like you could use some cash," as he continued to point out what certainly seemed to be an incredibly random scattering of people from throughout the audience. "And how about you?" he asked of his final subject (a middle-aged man off to his left), having by that point selected at least a dozen different participants.

The hostess suspected that he was about to draw a deck of cards, but he defied her expectations— this _could_ have been a card trick, absolutely; however, cards were just a bit too easy for Anakin.

"Is that alright? Can all of you hear me?" he asked the people he'd selected, drawing a collection of hearty, affirmative shouts. "Good," he said next. "Now, there's a notepad and a pen at the end of every row; if everyone I selected could get their hands on a piece of paper and something to write with, I'd appreciate it." He paused for a moment as they began to do just that before adding offhandedly, "I used to have an assistant for these sorts of things, you know."

Then, he grinned in Padmé's direction; she hoped nobody else had noticed that his comment was meant for her. Just as with his greeting, though, she knew for certain that it was— when it came to his hostess, Anakin was far from subtle. 

_"I think he's looking at you,"_ whispered Dormé to her friend, as the people hoping to win the cash Anakin had shown off gathered what they needed.

 _"He's always looking,"_ Padmé answered, just as she had back in the staff washroom at work, where she'd already spoken to Dormé about her frustration with being the near-constant focus of the magician's gaze.

Before Dormé could respond, the star of the show was ready to continue. "I'd like everybody I chose to write down a number," he said. "And I mean _any_ number— it can be one, or it can be six billion; it can have an exponent, or a decimal. Hell," he laughed, "you can pick a fraction for all I care. Once everybody's got one, I'll start guessing." He leafed through his cash as he went on, "If I get your number wrong, I owe you— I'll give you every last dollar from my wallet, no matter how much money I've got stuffed in here."

From where Padmé was sitting, it happened to look like quite a lot. Was the magician in the habit of giving away his own cash at his shows? What she didn't know was that Anakin was in no danger whatsoever of losing so much as a cent.

"You," he said, starting once again with the blonde woman at the front. "Your number is five hundred thirty-six thousand and four, and you're disappointed because your phone's screen is cracked. You were hoping to buy a new one with the money you thought you might get out of this."

The woman stared first at him, and then down at her piece of paper, looking somewhat dumbfounded. "I— well—" 

"Why don't you give me the phone for now, and I'll see what I can do for it while I finish with everyone's numbers?"

"I don't understand how—"

"Don't worry," he chuckled, "I don't need to unlock it to repair it. Did you know that I'm not _just_ a magician? I'm awfully good at fixing things, too." He stepped down a small flight of steps to meet her where she was seated at the bottom of the stage; held out his hand. "Your phone, please."

She handed it over, and he made it light up; held it high over his head to show it to the crowd. Even from far away, it was evident that the screen was badly damaged. He slipped it into his pocket without another word, and jogged back up to the centre of the stage to continue on with the numbers. 

Somehow, he didn't make a single error— one man had chosen three fifths of five million six hundred thirty thousand seven hundred and two; another had chosen six to the power of ten divided by three. One person had chosen their mother's phone number, and another hadn't chosen a number at all.

"That's cheating," Anakin said admonishingly as he looked straight at that particular member of the audience, "but _you_ wrote down a name— the name of the street you grew up on, if I'm not mistaken."

Of course, he wasn't.

He finished flawlessly, and just as Padmé was about to whisper to Dormé that the magician must have planted an impressive number of participants throughout the crowd, he went back to the woman whose phone he'd slipped into his pocket minutes before. 

"Here you go," he said, handing her back the device.

"How did you _do_ that?" she exclaimed, turning it over in her hands. "It was ruined; I dropped it on—"

"—On the pavement outside the bank last Tuesday afternoon," Anakin finished for her. "How does it look now?"

"It's... well, it looks brand-new. I don't understand how you—"

"See?" he smiled, interrupting yet again. "More than just a magician. As he turned to go back up the stairs and re-take his place, he looked over his shoulder and asked for confirmation, "I was right about the bank on Tuesday, too... wasn't I?"

He was.

The show went on this way for a while: Between tricks that involved things like floating water in the air absent a container, and throwing daggers with what should have been impossible accuracy (he picked a man from the audience to press up against a board before completely surrounding him with knives, in fact), he continued to confound his spectators with his apparent mentalism. Even Padmé had to acknowledge that he was calling on too far too many different people for them to all have been plants— he even managed to anger one of them by revealing some highly specific, incredibly private information about their family history. 

By the time he seemed to be starting to wrap things up, Padmé's mood had shifted from annoyed disbelief; she was now intensely curious, in spite of the way she felt about Anakin's attitude. Her brain had nearly gone into overdrive attempting to decode his methods. He was impressive, certainly... but she was also quite sure she knew that he wasn't actually harnessing any sort of otherworldly power. It bothered her just enough to make her want to figure it out.

"Usually," he said, "I'd end the show with something special... but tonight, I seem to have forgotten one of my props. Would anybody here happen to have a handgun?" As he surveyed the seats, he added, "You need to have bullets, too— a gun is useless without bullets."

A few different men raised their hands somewhat tentatively. Guns were legal to carry, of course, but most people in this particular city weren't in the habit of advertising their own possession of the deadly weapons. 

"Come on up, then," he invited two different volunteers, motioning for them to hurry onto the stage. "We don't have much time left."

Once his most recent subjects had joined him, Anakin instructed them to draw and load (if necessary) their pistols. They did, and following that, he had each of them fire a couple of rounds into the heavy wooden board at which he'd been tossing knives earlier in the evening. The bullets went right through it: The firearms were clearly genuine, as was their ammunition. After that, Anakin stepped several feet away from the two men; pressed his own body up against that badly-abused cut of wood.

"Now shoot me," he instructed calmly, standing stalk-still with his arms outstretched. "Aim for my head, if you can."

One of the two participants seemed to freeze up; the other protested. "This is irresponsible," he said. "I can't fire this at you; it'll kill you."

"No it won't," the magician countered, smiling serenely. "As I said, there isn't a lot of time left— if you won't shoot me, I'll call on someone who will."

"But I can't—"

Before the more cautious of the two could finish his sentence, the quieter one unfroze. He faced Anakin, and lifted his arm. After a moment's hesitation, he went ahead and pulled the trigger on his weapon.

He missed.

"That's no good," scolded the apparently suicidal magician. "I said to shoot at _me_. Try again." 

He did— and this time, he took a moment to line up his shot prior to taking it. 

Before the _bang_ had even finished reverberating off the walls of the venue, Anakin had both raised a hand, and made a noise: "Ow!" he exclaimed, dropping a spent piece of ammunition onto the surface of the stage. "I always forget how _hot_ those things are when they come out."

The man who'd protested looked flabbergasted; enough, it seemed, that he simply had to try shooting at the magician for himself. He did, and when the same thing happened, he looked down at his own pistol in awe. "I didn't— I mean, you _couldn't—"_

Anakin only shrugged. "I'm not afraid of guns," he said simply, and after handing back to the the two volunteers their respective used bullets, he sent them off to return to their seats and went on to thank his crowd. 

Padmé, now actually wishing she'd been positioned _closer_ to the stage, didn't notice her own mouth hanging agape until Dormé pointed it out to her. The hostess would spend the rest of the night trying (and failing, to her own frustration) to figure out just how it was that Anakin Skywalker seemed to be able to defy reality. 

She wouldn't have admitted it to anybody who'd asked her, but the magician had finally managed to capture at least a tiny sliver of her interest. He didn't have to be able to read her mind to know it, and he was more than prepared to capitalize on her fresh curiosity— he was, he thought, one step closer to making her his. 

He could hardly wait until the next time he got to see her at work.


	6. Chapter 6

It was Saturday now; Saturday evening, to be exact, and Padmé couldn't stop herself from staring in the direction of the restaurant's front doors (it was fortunate for her that her job tended to require that she do so). She had been at work for a couple of hours by that point, and typically Anakin Skywalker would already have walked into the establishment fresh from one of his shows. Despite believing him to be both overbearing and manipulative, part of her was hotly anticipating seeing him again: She wanted to know just how it was he'd done what she had witnessed him do the previous night, because she knew it couldn't possibly have been what it looked like. Not having an explanation for his feats bothered her— since he seemed to want to speak with her so badly, then perhaps tolerating his attention for a little while could, she thought, draw out some of his secrets.

What she didn't know was that the magician's making her wait was, in part, deliberate. He wanted more than anything for her to be eager to see him, and he knew that the longer he took to show up at her place of work that night, the more keen she would be to speak to him when he finally walked through the doors.

Right now, he was standing outside just around the corner, smoking cigarettes and glancing repeatedly at his watch. He might not ever have been anxious about his work, but Anakin was, in fact, nervous about commencing his next conversation with Padmé. It wasn't something he'd have readily conceded, even to himself... but the fact that he couldn't peek into the hostess' mind or effortlessly bend her will to his inspired in him a very unfamiliar disquiet. It was so unfamiliar that he barely recognized it; all he actually knew was that his heart was beating with abnormal haste, and that his stomach felt as it might have if he'd had a few too many drinks. 

He tossed his latest butt to the pavement, and ground it out beneath the heel of his shoe. After that, he checked his watch yet again. It was two full hours past the time he'd normally have gone to look at Padmé; surely that was long enough for her to start to wonder where he was. He took a very deep breath (likely without entirely understanding why it was he needed to do so), and willed his feet to begin to move. He couldn't help but wonder why it was he felt almost frozen in place; however, he wound up in front of the restaurant in such short time that he didn't have much of an opportunity to process that particular conundrum.

Padmé, for her part, had just ventured to take the magician's business card out of her pocket. It was the one he'd both torn up and mysteriously repaired; she'd kept it on her person for virtually all of the time that had passed since receiving it. It utterly confounded her to the point of being irritating, and she had been looking it over especially frequently since last night's spectacle: If she could figure out what he'd done to fix the card, then perhaps she could decipher some of his other tricks, too.

"Magic is for little kids," she muttered to herself as she turned it over in her hand. "He couldn't possibly—"

"Padmé," grinned Anakin, almost as if on cue. He'd seen her standing at her station through the large, glass double-doors before he'd even started to step through them. Now that he had, he practically seemed to glide over to her; as he did, he just so happened to notice what she was looking at. "Did I impress you enough for you to want to change your mind, then?"

"No!" she answered, altogether too defensively. Then, having speedily composed herself, she replaced the card in her pocket, greeted the magician using his name, and asked him reflexively, "Table for one, or a seat at the bar?"

"The bar," he laughed, happy to know he'd apparently been the subject of her thoughts before he'd appeared.

Although he may not have been able to read her mind, he certainly could tell that he'd startled her. It made him feel relieved; a bit more in control of the situation than he would have otherwise. Anakin was, after all, attempting to catch the attention of the only person he'd ever met whose inclinations he hadn't been able to influence. Part of him couldn't help but wonder— might there have been something special about her, too? He couldn't see why else he'd been so innately drawn to somebody who could so easily (and unknowingly) resist him. 

...Of course, that might very well have been one of the things that made her the most irresistibly enchanting person he'd ever laid eyes on. The notion had never entered the magician's head that something he wanted should be difficult for him to get, such had been his fortune so far. Padmé, though, seemed to defy everything he thought he knew about his capabilities.

After checking that there was a spot for Anakin at the bar, the hostess turned to seat him. She was glad not to have to look him in the eye anymore, at least for the time being.

...

"Oh, come on!"

_"What?"_

Padmé looked down disdainfully at her own hand— or rather, at its contents. She was in the staff washroom again with Dormé. It was late in the evening, they'd just finished their break, and the two of them were getting ready to venture back out into the dining room. 

"He did it again," she said, holding out the tiny shreds of black and white cardstock which had once comprised Anakin Skywalker's business card. 

"Did what again?" asked Dormé, who was still tying up her hair, and did not immediately recognize the pile in her friend's palm for what it was.

"The business card! You remember the one he fixed?"

"Oh, that— sure, what about it?"

"Well, he ripped it up again— _without touching it."_ She didn't know why she didn't just toss the tiny pieces into the trash right then and there; however, she didn't— instead she stuffed them back into her pocket where she'd found them.

"The same one?" asked Dormé, giving Padmé a curious look.

"Yes, the same one; the only one I've ever had," the hostess answered. "I just don't understand how he—"

"—Why were you still carrying his business card around?" her friend pertinently interrupted.

"Because it's annoying," said Padmé decidedly.

"So then why didn't you just get rid of it the first time he messed with it?" Dormé countered. Having finished with her hair, she'd already turned away from the mirror. 

"...Well, at first I thought there must be something weird about it. I wanted to figure it out, but I couldn't, and that's when it started to bug me."

 _"So why did you put it back in your pocket again?"_ The waitress truly couldn't understand it. For someone who disliked the magician so much, Padmé certainly seemed to be devoting a lot of energy to him. Dormé still wondered why on Earth he wouldn't just leave her alone; however, she also still couldn't shake the feeling that there might be something exceptional about him.

Padmé sighed. "I don't know," she admitted. 

"Are you going to talk to him tonight?"

"Probably— I want to know how he's doing what he's doing, because it doesn't make any sense. I thought I'd have him figured out after last night, but I don't. And since he's not going to stop bothering me whether I ignore him or not..." She trailed off, realizing that she sounded silly, even to herself.

Dormé smiled. "Are you going to take him up on his offer? Because that would be such a neat—"

 _"No,"_ Padmé interrupted, in no uncertain terms. "I don't want to be a _part_ of what he does; I just want to know how he does it."

"Magicians don't give their tricks away to just anybody, you know," her friend pointed out.

"He's never treated me like I was 'just anybody'," the hostess countered.

Dormé knew she was right, and so after that, she didn't say anything else at all.

...

Sure enough, when Padmé walked back out into the dining room, Anakin was seated on his stool facing away from the bar, as though he'd been eagerly anticipating her return to his field of vision. He nodded at her as she passed; while she typically would have just shaken her head and continued on to her station, this time she stopped in front of him.

"How are you doing it?" she asked him, trying not to sound altogether too confrontational.

"Doing what?" he smiled, able to discern even without using his 'magic' that she meant the business card trick.

"You know what I'm talking about," Padmé said plainly.

"Did you want me to fix it again?" he asked. "I know it'll be awfully hard to call me without that card of mine in-tact."

"I wasn't planning on calling you," she told him.

Very deliberately, Anakin pouted. His pout was endearing; he knew it was, because he'd been told so. "Why not? You looked like you were having fun last night. Didn't you want to know a bit about how the tricks are done?"

Of course she wanted to know how the tricks were done. She'd assumed she would be able to figure them out by watching them, and again, it was irritating to her that she couldn't.

Even if her mind couldn't betray her to the magician, her facial expression must have, because before she could open her mouth to answer him, he went on audaciously, "When do you leave work tonight?"

"Not until after midnight," she said, somewhat disappointed in herself for answering the question to begin with. The kitchen stopped at one o'clock in the morning, and the bar closed at two; she would usually set off for home not long after. 

"I can wait," the magician told her, and he pulled his cigarettes out of the front pocket of his shirt. "Why don't you come for a walk with me when you're finished?" The knot in his stomach from when he'd been delaying entering the restaurant seemed to come back to him just then. Unlike everyone else, Padmé was perfectly capable of refusing him. Anakin was not used to his 'suggestions' actually being mere suggestions.

"A 'walk'?" she asked. "At two in the morning?" Aside from not knowing just what a casual stroll in the middle of the night was supposed to entail, the hostess wasn't entirely certain she felt comfortable or even safe agreeing to meet Anakin alone, outside, and in the dark. Then again, she considered, it wasn't as though the streets wouldn't be full of people; besides that, the city in whose midst they happened to live could never truly be said to be 'dark'...

"I take all my walks late at night," said Anakin, forcing his usually-effortless air of self-assuredness. "It's as good a time as any; besides that, we both work evenings, don't we?" 

Padmé hesitated for a long moment before realizing that there was a group of people standing in the foyer, right by her station. They were waiting to be seated; she didn't have any more time to waste talking to the magician, at least not right now. "...Fine," she conceded. "I'll meet you out front once I'm finished." 

She wanted to add that he had better be willing to make it worth her while by sharing at least some of his secrets; however, she knew she needed to get back to work quickly. She walked away from him without saying another word, already half-regretting having agreed to go anywhere with him at all. She'd have to tell Dormé before it came time to leave; that way, if he attempted anything untoward, somebody would at least know where she was. She might have been intensely curious about his tricks; however, Padmé still did not trust Anakin any more than she had before. 

As far as the magician was concerned, he'd just won another small part of his battle to capture and maintain his hostess' attention. No matter how special she might be or how jittery she had the potential to make him feel, her concession tonight emboldened him: Magic or no magic, he was going to get what he wanted, and what he wanted right now was _her._ Some time alone together (even if they couldn't truly be alone out on the city's streets) could very well go a long way toward dissolving her abnormally robust defences. 

He turned back toward the bar to smoke his cigarette and enjoy his drink, keeping an eye trained on the front of the establishment. He smiled to himself, and hoped that Padmé might find cause to check her pocket one more time before her shift ended.

He absolutely loved that she had opted to hang onto his card.


	7. Chapter 7

It didn't occur to Anakin that he'd had a few too many drinks that evening until he stepped outside at the end of it. The coolness of the night air felt almost like a slap in the face to him, and he broke one of his cigarettes trying to stick it into his mouth. For all of the ways in which he happened to be special, he certainly wasn't immune to the effects of liquor. After chastising himself for his lack of foresight, he threw his broken smoke to the ground and started to pull out another one.

Before he had the chance, though, his hostess appeared before him, fresh off of her shift. She was dressed the same way she was always dressed when he saw her; in that plain, black minidress— however, she'd changed out of the shiny little high-heeled shoes which happened to be part of her uniform. The magician had thought intently about what it might be like to touch her before; however, he'd never imagined that he'd be able to wrap his arms around her and have her nestle her head beneath his chin. He loved that thought almost as much as he loved thinking about what her hair might smell like if he were granted the opportunity to nestle his nose into it.

...Yes, he realized: He had absolutely enjoyed far too many drinks while he'd been waiting at the bar. Suddenly, he wished he'd opted for dinner instead; however, it was too late for that. Padmé was already here, waiting for him to take her for a walk. He wasn't about to back out now; if he did, he knew he might never get another chance.

"Ready to go?" he asked, as smoothly as he could muster. He stepped up closely to her, maybe too closely— he truly couldn't tell. 

"Go _where?"_ asked Padmé skeptically. She took a small step back, wondering anew if she ought to have blown Anakin off again. Dormé had been ostentatiously excited that she'd conceded to going off with him; she had agreed to keep her phone turned up, but she'd also made it clear that she thought her friend was making a good decision. Again, Dormé couldn't recall the magician's having manipulated her; if she could, she might have thought differently... but the fact was that she'd sent Padmé off with a smile, and a request that she tell her how the 'date' had gone upon its completion. 

The hostess herself certainly didn't think of this as a date, though, or anything even approaching one. For that matter, it also wasn't a job interview— she was simply attempting to satisfy her reluctantly growing curiosity.

Anakin almost faltered at her query, because he truly hadn't had a destination in mind when he'd suggested they walk together. He wasn't used to planning ahead, because he usually didn't have to. "...We'll go for dinner," he finally answered, standing tall as he attempted to cultivate an air of sobriety. "I should have eaten when I first came in, but I didn't. You must be hungry, too; you've been at work all night."

"...Maybe a bit," Padmé admitted, despite her trepidation. "What were you thinking?"

"I know a place," the magician told her confidently, glad to have been asked. "Follow me, and we'll be there in no time." He turned on his heel, and started to walk in the direction of the spot he had in mind. Fortunately, he was still steady on his feet; steady enough, anyway, that the hostess didn't opt to go back inside the restaurant, or hail a taxi to try to get away from him. 

Now that she was willing to spend at least a little bit of time alone with him, Anakin was determined to make her realize what she'd be missing out on if she kept resisting his advances. 

...

"You've got to be kidding me," said Padmé, as Anakin handed over some cash to the man running the hot dog stand. It was only a few blocks away from where she worked, in front of a train station. Just as Padmé had predicted, the streets were far from empty. That did serve to make her feel a lot better about being out with the magician; however, she was a bit surprised that he'd taken her out for a hot dog, of all things.

"What? I said we were getting dinner, didn't I?" After thanking the hot dog guy, he picked up one serving of his favourite street food in each hand, turned to his hostess, and grinned— perhaps a bit too widely. "These are fantastic," he said. "Just trust me. Which one do you want?"

Trying not to roll her eyes or make a face, Padmé reached for the one he was holding in his right hand. "This one, I guess."

"You want anything on it?" he asked, as he covered his own meal with a copious amount of ketchup. 

"Mustard," she said, but before she had the opportunity to reach for the plain yellow bottle sitting on the little metal counter, she found that it had come to her: Anakin had extended his newly freed hand, and appeared to have twisted his wrist in a way that caused the condiment to _float_. She could hardly believe it, let alone understand it. The hot dog guy only laughed, presumably because he was familiar with his customer. 

"Mustard," the magician echoed, and he started to laugh, too. 

"What the...! What are you—"

"Go on," he said, arm still extended. "Take it. I'm not going to stand here like this all night." When she didn't (understandably, she felt a bit frozen right then), he took the liberty of turning it over in the air with another twist of his hand, and deposited a thick line of its contents right onto her meal. After that, he made it come to him so that he could add some of it to his own ketchup-laden dinner. As he replaced it on the counter from which he'd caused it to float away in the first place, he said to her, "I hope that's okay."

Dumbfounded, Padmé shook herself out of her bewildered trance. "...It's fine," she told him, but he'd already waved goodbye to the hot dog guy and started to step over to a nearby bench so that he could sit down as he ate. Following him, she demanded, _"How did you do that?"_

Anakin laughed again, and once he'd landed gracelessly on the wooden seat (he was still tipsy), he bit into his hot dog. After wiping some stray ketchup off of his lip with his thumb, he looked up at where she was still standing and shrugged before answering her through a mouthful of meat and bread, "Magic."

Padmé didn't like his answer at all. "There's no such thing as 'magic'!" she near-shouted at him. She should have anticipated that he'd irritate her— it seemed to her that it was his favourite thing to do.

Anakin swallowed his bite of hot dog and tilted his head at the hostess, taken slightly aback by her level of frustration. Just as he wasn't accustomed to taking the future into consideration, he truly wasn't used to reading people. Why should he ever need to read anyone if he could invariably get inside their heads? He'd never been able to peek into Padmé's head, though, and so had only ever been aware of her feelings when she'd made them obvious to him... much as she was right now. He supposed he should be grateful.

"Of course there's no such thing as magic," he lied. Anakin had no idea as to whether or not he was a good liar, because he was typically so persuasive that he very rarely had to do it. 

"You said you'd tell me how you do your tricks if I came out here with you," Padmé reminded him, gathering herself. The last thing she wanted was for the magician to think he'd gotten under her skin enough to make her feel emotional about his performance.

"Sit down," he said, because she was standing over him directly in front of a streetlight, and every time she moved, he got a jarring eyeful of bright-white LED.

She paused first, but then she granted his request. He was relieved to have the light out of his eyes, and glad to have his hostess sitting next to him; that made him smile. Now that he happened to be so close to her, it was impossible for Padmé not to notice that he was just as handsome as Dormé had initially observed. 

"Are you going to tell me anything or not?" she asked, more kindly than she'd said anything else to him all night. Looking him in the eye, she finally happened to register that he was at least a little bit intoxicated. The hostess would have known that particular look anywhere, thanks to where she worked. She wasn't sure whether it annoyed her, or made her want to treat him more gently than she would have otherwise. Had he drank so much waiting for her because he'd been bored, or because he'd been nervous? She could hardly imagine the magician being nervous.

After another bite of his hot dog (because he still thought eating something might aid him in combating his inebriation), Anakin asked back, "How much do you want to know?"

"I want to know how you keep switching the business cards." She had, indeed, wound up checking her pocket once more before leaving work that night, only to find that he'd repaired the torn-up little piece of paper yet again. The only problem was that he couldn't possibly be repairing it— could he? She hadn't thought so, but she was beginning not to know what she thought, such had been the effect of his tricks on her. "I want to know what you did to that woman's phone at your show; how you can afford to plant so many people in your audience. I want to know what you did to the guns that should have killed you, and how you make things like cigarettes and mustard float." 

She made her appeal pleadingly, even though it embarrassed her that she should be as interested in Anakin as she was beginning to realize she was. Dormé had been correct when she'd pointed out the unusual amount of energy her friend happened to be expending on somebody she purported to actively dislike. 

It was a shame for him, of course, that he couldn't see through whatever it was that blocked her thoughts and feelings from his special intuition. 

"I've never once switched that business card," he said. "It's the same one I ripped up the first time I tried to give it to you. As for the phone, it was easy to fix... and there are no plants in my crowd. The guns were real, and I didn't know the men who owned them— and the mustard... well, that's one of my oldest tricks." He chucked out loud to himself as he recalled irritating his own mother by manipulating things in her kitchen as a child.

Padmé sighed. "You're not actually going to tell me anything, are you?" She looked down at her hot dog with a shake of her head.

Leaning in a bit more closely, Anakin repressed a strong urge to touch the hostess. Her face, her hair, her neck, her arms... every part of her that he could see was beautiful. However, he understood even in his current state that if she didn't want to work with him, she certainly wouldn't take well to him placing his hands on her. 

"It's mostly a matter of catching people off-guard," he said, which was not entirely untrue. "People aren't used to paying attention to things— it's easy to take advantage of them when they aren't watching your hands." 

"That doesn't explain the numbers," she pointed out. "Or the phone. Or the—"

"What are you going to give me?" he interrupted, still from far too close-up. He could smell her perfume this way, or maybe it was just her shampoo. It was subtle; not overbearing, as he so often tended to be.

"What?" she asked, because she didn't understand. 

_"What are you going to give me?"_ he repeated. "I'd love to let you in on how some of this is done, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping you'd have done some thinking about that offer I made you."

"I don't want to be your assistant," said Padmé plainly. 

"Sure you do," countered Anakin presumptuously, after taking another bite of his dinner. The audacity in his statement could just as easily have been his personality talking as the alcohol. "The tricks wouldn't bother you so much if you weren't interested in them, would they?"

Now he was starting to sound a bit like Dormé, when she'd asked why the hostess hadn't simply thrown the business card into the trash in the first place. Padmé had no desire to admit that either of them may have had a point. "It's because you won't leave me alone," she said instead. And really, how was she supposed to get him off of her mind when he was constantly staring?

"I can't help it," he told her. _"You're perfect."_ Forgetting about his hot dog for a moment, he went on, "Ever since I first saw you, I knew you'd be brilliant on-stage. Don't you want to get out of that restaurant; do something people will remember you for? I don't think you understand how much I can do for you if you'll just give me a chance." He smiled. "Your friend doesn't seem to think I'm so bad."

"So why don't you ask her?" Padmé didn't understand why Anakin seemed to think no one else would do.

 _"Because she isn't you."_ The magician sat up straight again at that point; gave his hostess some space. Couldn't she tell how special she was? If not, he'd have loved to show her.

Padmé finally took a tentative bite of her own hot dog, because she was at a loss for words. She didn't look at Anakin while she did. What was she supposed to say to that? Part of her wished more than ever that she hadn't agreed to walk with him; however, another part of her seemed to be telling her that it might be worth it to concede a little more of her time to him. She doubted that her curiosity was going to leave her any time soon; on top of that, she also didn't think the magician was going to quit staring at her just because she said 'no'.

In response to her silence, he went on, "How about you help me for just one night? To see if you like it more than you like what you're doing right now? If you decide it's not for you, then I'll stop bothering you— for good." Anakin had made that promise to Padmé before, and he still wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep it... but he'd have said nearly anything at this point if it meant she'd give him a shot. He couldn't remember ever wanting anything else so badly; he was almost taken aback by the strength of his own desire.

The hostess, once she'd swallowed that reluctant first bite of her hot dog, turned to look at the magician once again. She studied his eyes; she'd never noticed his eyes before, really, but right now they stood out to her. They were big and blue, and if she hadn't known better, she'd have thought she detected in them an earnestness that she'd believed was uncharacteristic of him, at least until right now. To her knowledge, he never bothered anyone else this way— perhaps he really did think she was special.

That shouldn't have affected her judgement at all, and she knew it, but in spite of everything, she said to him anyway, "Fine. Fine, I'll give you _one night."_ Before his face had a chance to light up too much, she began hastily to qualify her response with, "But I'm not quitting my job for you. And if I don't like it—"

"You'll like it," he assured her, cutting her off. "I promise you'll like it." As he smiled and leaned back in, "You're going to be fantastic. I think so, and everyone else will think so too." He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so excited. People whose minds he could infiltrate with ease didn't excite him; almost by definition, they couldn't. Right now, though, he was absolutely thrilled.

Padmé only shook her head once again, and averted her gaze in favour of another bite of that hot dog; the hot dog dressed with the mustard Anakin had appeared to manipulate with his mind.

She was already wondering what on earth it was she had just gotten herself into.


	8. Chapter 8

_"What are you doing?"_

_"Calling a cab, Anakin. It's three-thirty in the morning."_

_"Oh. Okay."_

...

The ride had been short, at least for Padmé, but Anakin had enjoyed every second of it. It had taken less cajoling than he'd have expected to get her to share a taxi with him, and to his surprise, she'd had the driver drop her off right in front of her apartment building. He certainly didn't plan on abusing his fresh knowledge of where she lived, but it did make him feel satisfied to be privy to that particular bit of information.

"Thursday night," he muttered to himself, sitting in his own living room with his legs stretched out on his sofa and a cigarette in his hand. He'd woken not long ago from a few hours of dreamless sleep, following his outing with his hostess. Typically he'd have rested a little longer (or a _lot_ longer, depending on the sort of evening he'd had and how much he'd had to drink), but right now he didn't feel much like sleeping.

He glanced over at the television, which was turned on, but muted. It was set to a news channel right now, which was currently broadcasting a detailed weather forecast for the coming week. It was supposed to rain on Thursday, but Anakin didn't mind the rain. He wondered whether Padmé did or not, and then lamented the fact that if she'd been anyone else in the world, he'd already know what sort of weather did or didn't bother her. Thursday, of course, was the day she'd agreed to attend his show— not as a member of the audience, but as his assistant. He couldn't help but try to discern just what it was he'd said or done to make her agree to help him out; however, much like her tolerance (or lack thereof) for bad weather, he couldn't make heads or tails of it. 

He blew a few rings of smoke out into the air then, because he liked how they looked as they spread out and dissolved.

It had taken all he had not to touch her when they were seated together in the cab she'd called; she had been even closer to him in the cramped back seat of it than she'd been on the bench outside, as they'd eaten their hot dogs. He had definitely smelled her hair then; had been very close to having his own leg brush up against her's, in fact. He'd liked it, and liked it far too much... so much that he was now irrepressibly restless; lost in his thoughts of her. What the hell made her so special, anyway? If she were anyone else, he might have resented her, but he simply couldn't. In his eyes, she was incredible— perfect in every possible way.

It was at that point he realized that he didn't even know her last name.

 _"Damn it,"_ he muttered to himself, because he'd gone so long without tapping his cigarette over the ashtray set atop his coffee table that its ashes had fallen onto his shirt. They stood out against it, because it was white; almost all of Anakin's shirts were a bright, crisp white. He sat up straight, planted his feet on the floor, and brushed the ash off of himself as best he could. It didn't really work, of course; all it did was spread the fine substance around before grinding it into the fabric even further. That made him scowl. Not that it really mattered, of course; it would come out in the wash easily enough... although, truth be told, Anakin didn't especially like doing laundry.

He sighed and looked across the room, out the window. The sun was starting to rise, and so after stubbing out his cigarette, he hoisted himself up into a standing position and walked over to close the blinds. He didn't have to walk far: His apartment was sparsely adorned, and although it was very modern, it wasn't particularly spacious. It didn't need to be; Anakin was only one man, after all, and he possessed a distinct lack of fondness for guests. 

He looked out at the city briefly before blocking it from his view. He lived fairly high up, and could see lots of it from here. It was a big, old city, and it sprawled: Amongst other buildings like his own, there were bank towers and advertising firms; hundred-year-old post offices, and parks dotted by old-growth trees. Anakin had always liked it here. The contrast between what was old and what was new suited both him and his profession, he thought, and he adored the fact that the place never entirely shut down. Not in the middle of the night; not in the dead of winter— _never._ This was in sharp contrast to where he'd grown up with his mother: Their little town had often seemed dead to him, or as though it might be lingering on the verge of ceasing to exist. 

Anakin had loved his mother, of course, but he hadn't loved where she'd raised him. At his earliest opportunity, he'd left that place; left it and never gone back. The last time he'd visited it had been to attend her funeral, and now that she was gone, he knew there was nothing left for him there. The city was home to him, now; _this_ city. Besides being intricate and captivating, it was a wonderful place to work... particularly for somebody who made their living playing tricks on people.

Having spared his eyes the torture of the fresh daylight threatening to pour in through his window, he turned his attention to a large trunk pushed up against the far wall of his living room. It was as plain as his apartment's interior décor on the outside, but the inside of it was bright and colourful. After venturing to open it up, he scanned the top layer of its contents with his eyes. The trunk was brimming with clothes— women's clothes. There were sequinned dresses in a variety of colours and lengths, close-fitting satin bodysuits intended to be paired with sheer stockings, and an assortment of other impeccably-tailored ladies' formal wear. There were accessories, too; jewellery and belts, and even clutches and handbags. 

Truthfully, Anakin didn't know the first thing about women's clothing, except for what he thought looked nice. The garments in the trunk had belonged to his former assistant; the one who'd left him. She had selected all of it, because he'd given her license to do so. That, he thought, had been generous of him; the aesthetic of his show had always been important to him. She had left everything behind when she'd gone, and Anakin wondered whether or not Padmé might share her tastes. He'd only ever seen her dressed in that little black outfit she was made to work in, and he had no idea as to whether or not it appealed to her. If it did, then he might be in a bit of a bind; everything he had for her to wear was rather elaborate. (Besides that, it might not even fit... however, both Padmé and his last assistant had been just about the same kind of petite; the fit was of less concern to him presently than the style.)

He supposed he could always ask her what she liked, sometime between now and Thursday... but again, Anakin was so unused to having to ask questions of other people that the notion of doing so made him feel uncomfortable.

Anakin hated feeling uncomfortable; he wasn't used to that, either. 

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he closed the trunk. If he left it open too long, its contents might start to take on the smell of his cigarette smoke, and anyway, he didn't especially like to think about his old assistant. She hadn't interested him in quite the same way Padmé happened to interest him; nonetheless, they'd been close— or so he had thought. To hear her tell it, it was Anakin's ethics that had driven her away, but really, what use did he have for 'ethics' when he could get whatever he wanted just by asking for it? They'd argued following their last show together; she'd been vehemently opposed to the particular manner in which he had manipulated one of their audience members. 

That was silly, he thought; his _job_ was to manipulate them. 

Regardless, she hadn't appreciated it, and during their argument, Anakin had lost his temper. He'd wound up hurting her; not too badly, not on purpose, and not with his hands... but it was enough that she'd been put off of working with him entirely. He supposed he could have coerced her into staying, but even he would have felt guilty about that, following what he'd done... and so, when she had walked out on him that night, it had marked the end of their tenure together.

At first, he'd felt hurt— betrayed. By now, though, he'd successfully convinced himself that what had happened had been for the better, not least of all because of the way he felt about Padmé. If he could manage to convince her that the opportunity he was offering her was a good one, then her presence in both his show and his life might very well enable him to forget about the person who'd eschewed him over something as petty as his morality. 

What Anakin didn't (couldn't) know about Padmé, of course, was that her sense of what was right and what was wrong were both deeply ingrained, and indomitably ardent... and that because he couldn't accomplish the feat of penetrating her mind, she was even less liable than the woman he'd worked with before to put aside any ethical issues she might have with the way he did his job. 

He'd walked into his kitchen by now; it matched the rest of his apartment in that it was small, and contained within it nothing more than what it needed to serve its function. Anakin might have been relatively well-off these days thanks to his special talent, but he hadn't grown up that way by any means, and he'd never managed to acquire very much of an inclination toward collecting personal possessions. He considered most things of that nature to be largely frivolous.

His trip to the kitchen had been made with the intention of eating something, but Anakin found, now, that he wasn't hungry. Between his mild hangover and his unacknowledged nervousness pertaining to Thursday night, all he seemed to be in the mood for presently was some coffee— some coffee, and another cigarette. His pack of smokes was still in his pocket, so he withdrew one and ignited it. With his little stick of burning tobacco held tightly between his lips (the smoke only barely bothered his eyes), he filled his percolator with fresh water and spooned into the top of it just enough ground coffee to make a nice, strong pot.

He wasn't yet certain as to what he wanted to do with his day, but since he didn't work tonight, he knew _precisely_ what he was going to do with his evening. 

Anakin might not have liked that he'd have to ask her to find out, but despite himself, he was very much looking forward to discovering just how Padmé happened to feel about sequins, silk, and— perhaps— rainy weather, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to post, and that all we did was hang out in Anakin's apartment. Much more than that soon, though.
> 
> (If I could make the city Montréal or Toronto without alienating anyone, I so would.)


	9. Chapter 9

"You... want me to come over to your apartment?" Padmé eyed Anakin suspiciously. She'd expected him to come in tonight to see her; however, she hadn't been expecting an invitation to his home by any means. She thought it presumptuous of him to ask: Her having agreed to work with him for a single night didn't at all mean she was ready to trust him; not to that extent, anyway.

Anakin smiled. They were standing on the sidewalk together outside the restaurant right now; it was very late, and Padmé had just finished her shift. It had been busy that night in spite of the fact that it was early in the week, and although Anakin had tried, he hadn't gotten a chance to say very much to his hostess since arriving. He'd made sure not to get too drunk this time, and he was hoping his present sobriety might aid him in being more persuasive. Unfortunately, it was also making him nervous, and again, Anakin was not used to being nervous. 

"Only for a little while," he said as he shook his hair away from his face and lit up one of his cigarettes, "and only so you can look at the dresses. There are a ton of them, and I have no idea what you like. Wouldn't you rather pick something to wear than have me choose it for you?"

Frankly, Padmé had assumed all along that Anakin would be the one to select her outfit for Thursday night, but she'd have been lying if she'd said that the notion of getting to pick something for herself didn't appeal to her. Perhaps in spite of herself, she'd always enjoyed dressing up; one of the things she disliked about her current job, in fact, was the dourness of her plain, black uniform. It might have been a trivial grievance, but she frequently found herself wishing for a bit more in the way of choice (and style, too) when it came to dressing for work. 

Anakin couldn't possibly have known it, but his hostess' preference just so happened to work to his advantage. 

"I don't know," she said. Then, with a coy little smile, "...Shouldn't you already know what I like to wear? I mean, with all those tricks you can do..." She trailed off and shrugged. Since she wasn't serving him as a customer right now, she knew she could get away with teasing him a little bit, and so she did. It felt good not to be obliged to please him; to be infallibly polite... but of course, she had no idea that she'd just so happened to have pressed what might have been the most pronounced of his buttons.

He froze, but only briefly. After recovering from the shock of her unknowingly playing upon his primary source of insecurity when it came to his interactions with her, he tried, "I might be a mind-reader, but did you know I'm also a gentleman? I would _never_ presume to tell a lady what to wear." He paused to take a drag off of his smoke before adding to that, "Since you're being kind enough to give this a shot, I think you should be comfortable while you're on-stage. Don't you think you should be comfortable?"

Padmé wanted to scoff at that, but something stopped her. 'Gentlemanly' would have been among the very last of many terms she might opt to use to describe Anakin Skywalker, but whether he was being genuine or not, he did have a valid point. As long as she told Dormé where she was going, she supposed there couldn't be any harm in stopping by Anakin's apartment that night to look at dresses. Anyway, he was famous, at least locally— it wasn't especially likely that he would risk his career doing something too untoward... and, while he might have been reputed to be a number of different things, as far as she knew predatory wasn't one of them.

"...Fine," she conceded, once she'd taken a long moment to consider it. "How far away from here do you live? Are we going to share another taxi?" She recalled her last backseat ride with him; the one they'd taken together following those hot dogs on the bench. He'd sidled up fairly closely to her then, but he hadn't done anything to make her truly uncomfortable— nothing she'd had to explicitly tell him to stop doing. 

"Farther than you, but not too far— if we do take a taxi, the ride shouldn't be longer than thirty minutes or so... _and_ I'll pay for another car whenever you decide you want to leave. Does that sound alright?" Finished with his smoke, he dropped it to the pavement and ground it out with his well-polished shoe before flashing his hostess another one of his very best smiles. Part of him hadn't expected her to agree to this; however, the fact that he had managed to convince her to come home with him despite being unable to use his 'magic' bolstered his confidence. 

"Let's get going, then," she said. "It's already late, and I don't want to be out for the rest of the night." Padmé always liked going home after work; typically she saved her errands for her days off... but she supposed this couldn't wait, if she wanted to have a choice as to what Anakin's crowd was going to see her wear on Thurdsay night. Somewhat frivolously, she wondered if she might be allowed to take her hair down for the evening— it was quite long, and she treated it well enough that it was also very beautiful... but she rarely got to take it out of the tight buns and high ponytails she was made to wear at work, and a small part of her tended toward lamenting that fact. 

Feeling both relieved and newly emboldened by his hostess' concession, Anakin stepped up to the curb, and hailed the first taxi he saw driving by. When it stopped, he opened the door for her; after she was settled in her seat, he climbed in right behind.

He was still nervous, but his present success was going a long way toward alleviating his anxiety. 

After all: Magic or no magic, Anakin Skywalker _always_ got what he wanted.

...

Padmé hadn't been able to stop herself from gaping when the cab into which Anakin had ushered her pulled up to his building. It was incredibly tall, and even fancier than she'd have expected it to be. As they exited the car and made their way inside, she registered the presence of a twenty-four hour concierge service, along with signage indicating the various amenities offered to tenants and their guests. There was a pool, a spa, a gym, and even a dining hall available for use; on top of that, every inch of the place was sleek, modern, and spotless— gleaming, in fact. 

"This is where you live?" she asked him, because although the place seemed in many ways to suit the image he liked to project, she was somewhat incredulous that a person who performed magic tricks for a living would earn enough money doing it to be able to afford a place like this. The city was expensive— Padmé wasn't about to admit it, but really, she was impressed. Perhaps her initial evaluation of magic as being something best reserved for children's birthday parties had been a little bit off-the-mark.

"This is it," answered Anakin, nodding at the concierge as he led his hostess to the elevator in the lobby, got inside of it with her, and pressed a button. "There are hardly ever any vacancies these days; I was lucky to get a suite here." That was a lie, really; luck had nothing to do with it. Anakin, rather, had 'persuaded' the superintendent into renting him the unit when he'd first arrived in the city a few years back. He hadn't had a reputation back then— or a proper job, or any credit history to speak of. Anyone else in his position would have found themselves laughed right out of the rental office, but of course, Anakin hadn't let that happen. He'd grown to like it here very much since then, and now that he was situated, he could scarcely picture himself living anywhere else. "Here," he said, stepping off of the elevator as its doors opened up to the nineteenth floor. "Number 1908."

Padmé repeated the number to herself quietly under her breath as they approached the door. She hadn't expected to actually be curious about how and where the magician lived any more than she'd expected to be invited to come and witness it for herself. Now that she was about to, though, she was eager to see just what Anakin's living space might reveal to her about the sort of person he actually was beneath his crisp shirts, shiny shoes, and enigmatic facade. 

As it turned out, though, the apartment itself didn't seem to reveal very much about him at all, particularly at first glance.

"It's like a hotel," she said as she was led inside, and it was. Aside from the faint odour of cigarette smoke (which she had expected, given how very often she witnessed Anakin lighting up), there really wasn't much to the place. It was neat and tidy, with barely anything in the way of personal effects on display: No photos, no trinkets, and no artwork; the only things she saw to indicate that someone actually lived here were a small, well-stocked bookshelf in the corner, and an ashtray on the coffee table sporting a few stray butts. 

"I guess I don't really spend a lot of time here," Anakin excused himself, wishing he could discern just what Padmé meant by her observation. All of a sudden, he felt rather exposed— enough to make him wish that, perhaps, he'd had a couple more drinks at the restaurant than he'd allowed himself that night. 

Padmé, only just then beginning to sense his anxiety, smiled up at him as she slid her shoes off in the foyer. "It's nice," she told him, which wasn't a lie. Then, "Where do you keep the dresses?" She'd just thought back, briefly, to their 'dinner' together on the bench beside the hot dog stand. He'd betrayed nervousness there, too, whether he'd intended to or not. It had caused her to be gentle with him then, and she supposed that it was having a similar effect on her now as well. How much of Anakin's audacity was just for show? She didn't know; she also hadn't realized until now that she was more interested in finding out than she'd ever have admitted to being a few short weeks ago.

"Over here," Anakin said gratefully, coming unglued from his spot beside the front door in favour of making his way over to the trunk full of costumes with which his previous assistant had left him. "There's enough in here that you're bound to find something you like." After a pause he added to that, "...And if you don't, I'd be more than happy to get you a different outfit in time for the show." 

Slightly taken aback, Padmé asked him, "Really?" She knew he'd taken a liking to her, but the ardency of his apparent willingness to please her was surprising. 

"Really," he confirmed. "I wasn't lying when I said I wanted you to be comfortable." It meant a lot to him that she was willing to do this, and not only because he'd had to put a lot more effort than he was used to into convincing her to give him a try. He really did think she was perfect, and not only for his show. He'd never, _ever_ been drawn to another human being the way he found himself drawn to Padmé. Although he was unused to having to put forth the amount of persistence that had been required to get her attention in the first place, he was finding the results of his own hard work to be incredibly rewarding.

Now that he had a grip on her (no matter how tenuous), he wasn't about to let her slip away from him; not if he could help it. He'd easily have bought a thousand dresses, if it meant ensuring her continued presence in his life. 

"Well," said Padmé, having graciously failed to pick up on the magician's near-desperation, "let's see what you've already got in here." She knelt down on the floor to unlatch the lid of the trunk at that point, but before peering inside of it, she looked up at him and reminded him, "It's only for one night— I'm sure you're right about there being _something_ in this box I won't mind too much."

Anakin only nodded, and did everything he possibly could to cast off the disquieting level of vulnerability he felt now that his beautiful hostess had stepped willingly into his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, Ani, she's in your house. Do not screw things up by being any more of a weirdo than you need to be.
> 
> I'm incredibly excited for the next chapter of this, so you can rest assured that you will not be waiting long for it. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly am sorry that this took so long to post. I haven't been feeling 100% lately, so it's been difficult to juggle stories the way I sometimes do.
> 
> I'm here now, though, and I've been pretty excited to get these two alone in a room together... so, I hope this is okay. Thanks for still being here, if indeed you are.
> 
> Also, this chapter is a bit long, although not irresponsibly so.

Anakin truly didn't have a lot of experience as far as the pursuit of women was concerned. It wasn't something he'd be prone to admitting (even if he'd had someone besides himself to admit it to), but it was a fact; a fact that might never in his life have been more evident to him than it was right now. 

There'd been dates in high school, with all the awkward outings and instances of backseat clumsiness emblematic of teenage courtship; besides that, there'd been fans: People who would, for one reason or another, become especially enamoured with the magician's performance, and seek him out for a private audience following one of his shows. Those encounters were easy to manage for Anakin; no feelings and no expectations meant no pain and no disappointment. He scarcely ever had to use his magic, because whoever approached him under those circumstances was invariably already interested in him... and even if he _had_ needed to use his special skill, to do so would have been easy; as easy if he were on-stage.

Padmé offered him no such reprieves, and so as she closed the door to Anakin's bathroom behind herself with an assortment of dresses slung over her forearm, the magician's nervousness spiked. He closed the lid to the costume trunk and lit a cigarette first, hoping it wouldn't betray him. Anakin smoked when he was nervous, but not _only_ when he was nervous... and anyway, his hostess was well aware by now of his strong affinity for tobacco. Next, he thought about sitting down on his sofa while he waited for her; however, he couldn't quite bring himself to do that. Instead, he stood; stood and paced the floor, which although it likely highlighted his anxiety even more than his smoking did, he couldn't seem to help.

Finally, he walked over to the window and pulled open the blinds. He nearly always kept them closed during the day, but it was dark outside right now, and his apartment offered whoever happened to be standing inside of it a near-perfect view of the city from above. Maybe, he thought, Padmé might appreciate it... enough, anyway, to distract her from his anxiety.

Anakin took a minute, then, to stare out at the cityscape; between the bright lights below and the sharp, satisfying sensation of the smoke from his cigarette hitting the back of his throat, he himself almost became lost in the scenery. Soon, though, he was startled out of his daze: He hadn't, in his distraction, heard Padmé come out of the bathroom; however, she had... and when she appeared at the end of the hallway, she made a request of the magician— one he perhaps ought to have anticipated. One that he certainly should have steeled himself in preparation for. 

"Do you think you could zip me up?" his hostess asked, as innocently as anyone had ever asked anything.

Anakin wasn't at all used to being startled; not only that, he was absolutely not accustomed to seeing Padmé with the near-full length of her bare back exposed. The dress she wore to work was short, but it wasn't by any means immodest, and the magician had never witnessed her wear anything besides it. The smooth, unblemished, light-olive tract of skin framed before him by the familiar, silky swath of close-fitting red was nearly enough to make him drop his cigarette right onto his carpet. 

"...Of course I can," he finally managed, leaning down to stub out his smoke in the ashtray atop the coffee table before making his way over to where Padmé was standing.

"Thanks," she said, as Anakin pinched the zipper's tiny metal tab between his thumb and forefinger, and pulled it upwards. He was relieved— as far as he could tell, the dress was a perfect fit.

"Do you like it?" he asked as she turned to face him, wishing he didn't have to take her word for it.

Padmé looked up at the magician curiously. As when she'd opened the trunk in the first place, his eagerness to please surprised her. During his visits to the restaurant, he always seemed so very self-assured, almost to the point of flippancy. She'd begun to wonder during their shared dinner of hot-dogs adorned by mysteriously-floating mustard whether or not the arrogance she perceived in him was just an extension of his act. Now that she was in his home, she was beginning to strongly suspect that it was. 

...Why should he be nervous _here_ , though? In his own space; his own domain? If she'd known the truth about his 'magic' (and about her own apparent immunity to it), she might have better understood the utter dearth of control he felt now that she was here. She didn't, though, and so she reacted to the shift in his demeanour the same way she had when she'd picked up on his anxiety outside the hot-dog stand: Kindly, and with a measure of sympathy. 

"I like it a lot," she answered his query. "Would it be alright if I wore this one on Thurdsay?" She couldn't help but question just what it was that caused her to be at all concerned with making Anakin feel comfortable right now, since he'd so rarely shown her the same courtesy in the past. 

"I—" Anakin started, although for some reason, he stopped. He'd thought that this would be easy for him; or at least, that it wouldn't be quite as hard as it was proving to be. For as bold as he'd been when he had courted her attention publicly, the hostess' presence in his home was unnerving him far more than he could ever have predicted. His palpable lack of control over the situation disarmed him, and he found himself almost jarred by the way she was making him feel. 

How _was_ she making him feel, exactly? 

"...Anakin?" prompted Padmé, because he seemed almost to have frozen. She rarely called him by his name; if she did, it was only when he walked into the restaurant. 

"...I think it would be wonderful," he finally managed, grateful for the jumpstart. "It's like I told you— you'll be _perfect."_ He knew he was leaning in, but was he leaning in too much? He'd never worried about it quite like this before. He tried to summon his own bravado anyway; tried to give off an air of nonchalance, but it was working even less effectively now than it had been on the night of their hot-dog dinner. Once again, he wished he'd allowed himself a few more drinks at the bar while he'd been waiting for her earlier in the evening.

The hostess laughed, entirely by accident— their hot-dog date had popped back into her mind, too; specifically, the part of it during which Anakin had told her that Dormé wouldn't be a satisfactory assistant for the simple reason that she was not Padmé. Padmé thought that was silly— strange, even. The two friends, interestingly and by sheer happenstance, didn't even look all that different from one another. What made the magician think that _only_ Padmé was suited to the job? Especially considering the fact that there existed other women who wanted it more than she did.

As she kept on staring up at him (he was awfully close, she noticed), she asked him as innocently as she had asked about his willingness to zip up the dress she was now wearing, "Why does it have to be _me?"_ He'd never actually told her; not in a way she could understand. Padmé thought well of herself generally, but by no means did she believe herself to be particularly 'special'... so why all of this attention? Why the persistence?

"Because you're different," said Anakin, studying her intently. He'd scarcely ever had the opportunity to do so from such a short distance.

"Different from _who?"_

The magician found quite suddenly that his mouth felt terribly dry, but he answered her anyway, "Different from _everyone._ I've never met anyone like you before." 

Padmé gave him a strange look; took the tiniest of steps backwards. "You hardly know me," she pointed out.

"I don't _need_ to know you," he countered, both hastily and far too emphatically. He realized his misstep when her meticulously-shaped brows converged and she backed up even further. "What I mean," he qualified, trying his best to sound collected, "is that there's something about you— something special; something _unique._ Don't tell me no one else has ever noticed it before." He'd never wanted to share his lifelong secret more than he wanted to share it with his hostess right now; however, he knew better than to blurt it all out at once. She wouldn't believe him; even if she did, it would only scare her away.

Anakin did _not_ want to scare his hostess away. Not after all he'd been through to get her here.

And there it was, thought Padmé: That stubborn presumptousness she'd always known Anakin to display. Right now, though, it seemed to her as if it were being tempered by something— something like that nervousness she'd already perceived in him, or freshly-conjured self-doubt. If she weren't as kind as she was, she might have gone ahead and called it desperation. Whatever it was, she still didn't understand it— any of it.

"You don't have to flatter me," she told him. "I've already agreed to—"

"That's not what I'm doing," he interrupted, because it really wasn't. "I mean everything I'm telling you; every last word. If you weren't different, I _would_ just get somebody else— but you _are_ different, so I can't." When Padmé still didn't seem to have been convinced, he added in earnest (whether it was wise or not), "I've been watching you for months, now. You know as well as I do that I show up at that restaurant nearly every single night. Do you think I do it just for the food? The drinks; the atmosphere?" 

"I— well—"

 _"I don't._ It's none of that. Everything I do there, I could do here— but I don't, because when I'm here, I don't get to see _you."_

Padmé had suspected for a while now that the magician's desire to have her come and work with him was about more than just his show; however, he'd never stated as much quite so plainly as he had just now. She didn't know what to say, which was unlike her. 

As she examined his face then, she registered in his expression a plaintiveness she'd never witnessed him display before. It shouldn't have been endearing, but it was. Dormé had pointed out to Padmé more than once that Anakin was handsome, and even she had to acknowledge that she would have needed to be dead not to notice it, too... but he'd never once caught her eye the way he was managing to catch it right now. He'd never laid himself bare to her the way he was doing presently; had never even come close.

"You come in every night just to see me?" A lot of the time, he didn't even get to speak to her for more than a few moments. What was he getting out of it? It should have put her off, she thought, but it didn't.

Anakin nodded. He still felt exposed; perhaps more so than ever before, but right now he didn't seem to possess a choice in the matter. Of course, he had no way of knowing that his present vulnerability was the very thing causing his hostess to consider him in a different light at all. He wasn't used to letting his guard down, because he never had to— the magician was comfortable with his stage persona; comfortable enough that he wore it almost everywhere he went.

 _"Of course_ I come in just to see you," he finally told her. "Why else would I bother?" It was a nice restaurant, and Anakin liked it very much, but not so much that he'd have gone there every night in the absence of the hostess.

Padmé, more out of surprise than anything else, nearly laughed again— but she didn't, and she was glad of it. Instead, she shook her head incredulously and said to him, "I don't understand."

 _My magic tricks aren't tricks,_ he wanted to say, _but you're the only person I can't use them on, and even though it's driving me crazy, I can't stop feeling like I **need** to be around you._ He also wanted to tell her all about her unrivalled, ethereal beauty; about the way he couldn't seem to take his eyes off of her whenever they found themselves in the same room together. 

Seeming to have left both his ostentatiousness and his bravado behind in the cab he'd taken with Padmé to get here, Anakin said to her simply, "All you have to understand is what it means to me that you're giving this a shot."

There was no way for her to even understand _that_ unless he told her, she thought, so she asked him next, "What _does_ it mean to you?"

Anakin shifted uncomfortably on his feet, swallowed at the persistent lump that seemed to have stuck in his throat, and answered her, "...A lot. It means a lot."

Despite everything about him that had annoyed her since he'd first approached her at work, and despite everything he was doing right now that ought to have been stoking her discomfort, Padmé appreciated the magician's apparently newfound sincerity.

First, she thanked him for it; after that, she stepped back down the hallway and into his bathroom to change out of the dress she'd chosen for Thursday (although not before having him unzip it for her, which he did with an almost indiscernibly trembling hand). It wasn't very long at all until she had slipped back into the little black outfit she wore at work, and found herself facing him in much the same way she had when they'd first stepped into his apartment together. 

"I should probably go home, now," she said, because although she hadn't been here for very long, it was late and she was tired.

"You only just got here," Anakin countered, perhaps having regained a bit of his usual countenance in the time it had taken for his hostess to change her clothes again.

Padmé did laugh this time. Now that she'd seen for herself that the magician had more than a single, insufferable side to him, she was more apt to receive his obtrusiveness: Again, he couldn't know it, but his own reluctant vulnerability had endeared him to her in a way his showiness simply hadn't. Still, she— for a number of reasons— thought it would be best if she didn't stay too long... at least for tonight.

"I know," she admitted, "but I've been up since this morning." She smiled to herself before adding, "Anyway, I have a funny feeling I'll be seeing you again at work tomorrow night... won't I?"

Anakin had no way of knowing, but he could have sworn that Padmé sounded hopeful— as though she actually _wanted_ him to come and see her. It was a relief, but it also flustered him. He hadn't expected it. His face felt hot; he hoped it didn't look the way he imagined it did, although he knew very well that the tinge of pink which may or may not have seized his visage was just another thing he couldn't control right now.

He supposed he'd have to get used to that, if he was going to be spending any more time alone with Padmé.

"You will," he agreed. "You'll see me." He paused before asking for a final confirmation, "...We're on for Thursday, then?"

Padmé nodded. "We are," she said, and although she didn't admit it just then, she found that she was now _almost_ eager in her anticipation of it. She liked that Anakin had proven to her (if inadvertently) that he might be more than what he seemed.

They parted ways that night after Anakin called a taxi to take his hostess back to her own home. He walked her down the hallway, rode with her in the elevator, and guided her once more through the palatial lobby of his apartment building. She couldn't help but take another look around it as she stepped out the front doors toward where her cab was waiting— Anakin had surprised her, she realized, in more than just one way.

The magician sent her off with both a smile and a small, admittedly awkward wave. He sighed with relief and let his shoulders fall as the car drove away; he supposed he hadn't fully registered just how wound-up Padmé had rendered him in the short time he'd been alone in her presence. Still, he felt pleased with himself— validated; reassured. If he could do on Thursday what he'd done just now (whatever the hell that was), then perhaps he might be able to maintain her attention; her goodwill.

If he could do that, then she might just opt to keep on working with him— might truly begin to look forward to seeing him; might even, if he was lucky, accept the next invitation he extended to her to come and visit him at his home. She may have thrown him off his game a bit tonight, but he hadn't by any means failed. Not yet.

Despite the exposure he had suffered, Anakin concluded his evening feeling both satisfied and emboldened: He was one step closer, now, to getting what he wanted... and ever since the first time he'd even so much as glimpsed her, what Anakin wanted more than anything else was Padmé.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was so much fun to let Ani lower his defences a bit. I feel like they each took an enormous step toward one another this time, and it was very satisfying for me to write it out.
> 
> Things really pick up from here following Thursday's show; I'm looking forward to it.


End file.
